Coast Guard cutter finds new port

Decommissioned Mackinaw to be floating museum.

Decommissioned Mackinaw to be floating museum.

June 24, 2006

MACKINAW CITY, Mich. (AP) -- The decommissioned U.S. Coast Guard cutter Mackinaw has a new home. The ship arrived Wednesday at Mackinaw City's Railroad Dock, welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd and a brass band. From now on it will be a museum ship, its icebreaking, training and search-and-rescue missions concluded. A new cutter with the same name will assume the Mackinaw's duties and use its mooring dock in Cheboygan, 15 miles south. "It means economic development for our town," Village President Robert Heilman said after reading a proclamation of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw Day. "This will mean a totally new period of history for us." Officials with the Icebreaker Mackinaw Maritime Museum Inc. failed to raise the $3.7 million needed to buy property on the Cheboygan River to keep the 290-foot ship in its longtime home port. The old Mackinaw was in danger of being dismantled for scrap after the Michigan Department of Natural Resources refused to host it at the state-owned dock in Mackinaw City. But local businessman Bill Shepler provided docking space, sparing the historic vessel. Shepler said he hoped to open the ship for tours in about a month. Much work remains to prepare it for the public, he said.